Professional Documents
Culture Documents
, edited by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham. Oxford African American Studies Center, http://www.oxfordaasc.com/article/opr/t0001/e4791 (accessed Wed Apr 13 17:28:40 EDT 2011).
Maundy Thursday (Holy Thursday) and Easter Sunday. The Puerto Rican churchgoers were theologically evangelical and socially conservative and did not embrace the liberal theology of Pastor Hawkins. They were Catholics who in later generations would be called charismatic Catholics, espousing many forms of Protestantism. During Hawkins's early tenure at Saint Augustine, he quickly gravitated to civil rights activism and a range of other issues associated with a gospel of good works. Since the 1940s a sidewalk slave market had existed where black domestic servants, notably maids, waited for hours in fair and inclement weather to be hired by white employers for an hour or a day without the regular references and paperwork. Many of those hired were illiterate migrants recently from the South who feared employment agencies that required the formal process. Hawkins and other blacks successfully pressured city government agencies to set up two offices in different parts of the city with hosts that served coffee and tea and retained the informal hiring practices while according black women domestics a degree of dignity. The Presbyterian Church was among the first to denounce segregation as an appalling evil. In the 1960s, the Presbyterian Church called some missionaries from abroad to work on picket lines and inner city Freedom Schools; they had much experience with working with suppressed and brutalized people and could devote sufficient time to work on what was now the number one goal of the Churchcivil rights and social justice. Hawkins challenged the white leadership of his denomination in May 1960 with a limited contest between himself and Herman Turner, a white moderate from Atlanta, Georgia, for the titular leadership of the northern Presbyterians. Turner enjoyed some prestige with northern and southern Presbyterians with his advocacy of the Atlanta Manifesto, which called for communications between black and white on race relations. Turner squeaked through with a two-vote margin of victory. He immediately appointed Hawkins as his vice moderator. These were exciting times for good race relations. The moderator position only lasted a year; Edler Hawkins was eager to try again. By running for moderator of the 3,000,000-member Presbyterian Church, Reverend Hawkins's name and image were etched in the minds of Presbyterians throughout the northern tier of the United States. In May 1964, Edler Hawkins ran and won the position as moderator of the Presbyterian Church. Forever after, Hawkins was defined by this singular moment of triumph: the first black moderator of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. Time magazine pondered the wider implications of Hawkins's victory: The United Presbyterians have a knack for breaking race barriers without catering to either politics or sentimentalism. A church that was 95 percent white was under no pressure to change, but it saw desegregation as a holy responsibility. Now Hawkins would show a face of color to white Presbyterians throughout the United States and Europe and reassure his black brethren in Africa of the justice of their church universal. In his one year as moderator, Hawkins championed ecumenism and civil rights and even slammed Victorian modesty, rejecting many aspects of sexual language and whatever else was considered profane, as a barrier in reaching young people. Earlier in the 1950s Hawkins had been fully involved in youth work including after school tutoring, youth fellowships, and day camps and a summer camp; Bohatam, a merging of two names of pastors who were good friends and co-founders of the small camp that did not survive Pastor Hawkins's tenure at Saint Augustine. After Hawkins's service as moderator, he continued his work as full-time pastor of St. Augustine and made many appearances on a variety of television and radio programs. In 1970, he gave up his pastorate and crossed the Hudson River to teach Black Studies and Moral Philosophy at Princeton Theological Seminary. On 18 December 1977, Hawkins died of an apparent heart attack. He was survived by his wife, Thelma, and two daughters, Ellen and Renee. Within months of his death, his friends established a foundation in his name and renamed a portion of East 165th Street near Prospect Avenue in his honor. Further Reading
Cone, James H. For My People: Black Theology and the Black Church (1984). Graham, W.F. The Constructive Revolutionary (1971). Martin, Andrew, ed. An Encyclopedia of African American Christian Heritage (2002). Wilmore, Gayraud S. Black and Presbyterian: The Heritage and the Hope (1998).